New Babbage Society for Psychical Research

Comment by Captain Maelstorme Smythe on December 30, 2008 at 9:46am

Who ya gonna call?

Comment by Dr. Augustus Dayafter on December 30, 2008 at 9:50am

Us... cause we're awesome!

Comment by Bookworm Hienrichs on December 30, 2008 at 9:57am

((I'm as skeptical as they come (RL--slightly more open SL), but here I am. *grin*))

Comment by Captain Maelstorme Smythe on December 30, 2008 at 10:00am

And I'm the most superstitious bugger ye ever wish to meet, so Dayafter has his polar opposites already. ;)

Comment by TriloByte Zanzibar on December 30, 2008 at 10:34am

Steampunk ghostbusters, you say? Think of the gadgetry!

Comment by Elfod Nemeth on December 30, 2008 at 10:38am

I like the sound of steampunk ghostbusters mentioned by TriloByte heh

Comment by Ghilayne Andrew on December 30, 2008 at 11:25am

Mary Roach wrote a tantalizing and witty book entitled Spook, which is a perusal of science's objective attempts, both current and historical, to gain insight about the hereafter. Her website offers exerpts from her book and a Table of Contents. http://www.maryroach.net/spook.html, and one can also read excerpts from Amazon.com if one is registered with them. One of the more lurid and entertaining sections of her book deals with the spiritualists of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Ms. Roach is a talented writer, who manages to infuse humor and spirit (pardon the pun) into her subject.

Besides, how can one resist a book which makes observations like this:

"The National Forest Service has a fine and terribly dark sense of humor, or possibly they have none at all. For somebody, perhaps an entire committee, saw fit to erect a large wooden sign near the site where fourteen emigrants bound for California were eaten by other emigrants bound for California when they became trapped by the savage snows of 1846 and starved. The sign reads: DONNER CAMP PICNIC GROUND. "

-- from the chapter on "Telecommunicating with the Dead" ... she an a tour group she is with are hoping to tape record the voices of members of the Donner Party trying to speak across time, but about all she comes up with are some soothing tapes of bird calls.

And I am particularly partial to Ms. Roach's transcripts of sessions with mediums wherein she is asking questions about the afterlife itself... do you eat? do you have sex? what's the weather like? what do you DO all day? do you sleep? ... and so forth. One of my favorite answers is one medium reports that a vain discarnate is overjoyed to note that fat people are skinny in heaven and that she can now wear pleated pants.

However, despite being a source of entertaining reading, please allow me to assure you that the author is quite serious in her quest for sifting between philosophical truths and scientific ones. What is of particular interest to this group is her devotion to the history of how people have similarly approached the question, including the notion of weighing souls (something I had not come across previously).

I look forward to participating and would categorize myself as a skeptical believer. That is, based on my own experiences I believe there is some form of energy that can be very startling at times, but I do not believe in the occult/psychic and sillyness that too frequently accompanies such events. Rather, I believe it is merely the manifestation of some physical energy which science does not yet directly observe, but which as living creatures we have varying abilities to sense. Sooner or later, we will discover and understand it, though. After all, 150 years ago few people had a notion of quantum fields, either.

Comment by Kyle Oller on December 30, 2008 at 1:49pm

Brilliant!!

Comment by Ceejay Writer on December 30, 2008 at 1:52pm

I wasn't sure if I believed in ghosts till I met Pete!

Comment by Dr. Augustus Dayafter on December 30, 2008 at 3:06pm

I am glad to see folks with an interest in the group. Miss Andrew, thank you for sending a link that will assuredly take even more of my time. I love when folks send new and interesting things for me to peruse.

The next step is to decide when we should meet and discuss things. Do we want a weekly meeting? A monthly meeting? How shall our meetings run? These are just a few questions that our group will need to have answered. We have 19 members here on the ning, does that warrant an in world group? Or do we want to keep it as a ning group and just meet in world to discuss in order to keep out group limit down?

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